'Only' 50000 Kindles to be sold in 1st year?

[Ervserver]

Sony must have sold enough of the 500 model to interest them into developing the 505

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

This Boston Globe article quotes a Forrester person as saying the Sony can't have sold more than "a few tens of thousands". From the wording, it's obviously a guess, but it's a guess from someone who guesses for a living. *shrug*

[Alisa]

I'm in the SF Bay Area and I don't see ads for them, either. You'd think Sony was trying to keep them a secret. It was even hard to find the display in the Sony Style store.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

Sony must have sold enough of the 500 model to interest them into developing the 505

Excellent point.

[gregr209]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I'm in the SF Bay Area and I don't see ads for them, either. You'd think Sony was trying to keep them a secret. It was even hard to find the display in the Sony Style store.

Alisa,

I am in the bay area as well...I commute into SF 2 to 3 times a week. In Oct the bart stations were covered with ads for the Sony 505. They had replaced all of the usual iPod signs that cover all the poles and walls of bart. There was a big push when it came out.

When I bought my Sony Reader at the store in Meteron they did have it placed in a pretty good location and it was easy to find. Also the Borders stores in San Fran also have a big Sony Ereader display but when I some them they only had a sample 505 displayed.

So for a couple of months Sony did do a pretty good job of advertising at least in San Francisco in my opinion.

Greg

[Alisa]

I'm in San Jose. No such push down here and they had the reader stuck in with the cameras at our Sony Style store. I guess they decided to make a better effort in SF. Maybe it's the fact that there are more commuters on public transit there.

[TallMomof2]

In Sunday's Washington Post Sony had a circular (full color on slick paper) that featured the Reader on the front cover.

[ElaHuguet]

Thing is, how many times do people stop by sony.com (unless they're looking to buy some electronic thingamajig), and how many people browse through amazon.com, where the first thing to hit your eyes is the Kindle ad? They don't need much else, and it's free publicity.

[datrop]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

I would say 50k would be on the high end, just because they are out of stock now doesn't mean they are selling like hotcakes, maybe they only had a few thousand to sell, and/or Amazon is wanting us to think they are selling like hotcakes

The reseller market on eBay might not be a bad indicator of Amazon's ability to get the Kindle out the door. I see 142 completed auctions (plus another 20 ongoing) since the evening of Nov. 29, which coincides with the first sightings posted here (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16587). While some of these should not be considered legitimate (e.g., "presale" or those ended prematurely and relisted), they do give an upper bound. (Invalid items anyway balance out the handful of multiple quantity auctions.)

Now, one just needs to guess reseller demand. Considering the price premium for a new in box Kindle, the Wii might be a good proxy. eBay shows about 60,000 Wiis sold (I'm low-balling their number of US-only Wiis of 61,556) for a two week period starting Nov 29; their search engine goes no further. For the month of Nov, there were 981,000 Wiis sold in the US. Of course, seasonality ruins any sort of linear approximation for a 2 week slice of that month of sales. However, it's reasonable to lower-bound things by assuming that those 60,000 Wiis came entirely from last month's sales of 981,000 => at least 6% of units go to the reseller market.

Taking all this into consideration, 162 Kindle auctions might suggest 2700-5400 (6% and 3% units going to resale) Kindles out in the wild since its release 3 weeks ago. With the Kindle eBaying for a 50-100% premium, I have a feeling that the 3-6% range might be a little low...

[Ervserver]

Along with the Kindle on Amazon's website is the graph showing all the negative reviews. Granted many of the negatives are from people who don't even own a Kindle but....you know how lazy people can be. Will they take the time to sort thru all the reviews or not.

Originally Posted by ElaHuguet

Thing is, how many times do people stop by sony.com (unless they're looking to buy some electronic thingamajig), and how many people browse through amazon.com, where the first thing to hit your eyes is the Kindle ad? They don't need much else, and it's free publicity.

[igorsk]

Also there's a little problem of Kindle being out of stock.

[silvania]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Well it depends. If they mean 50,000 by the end of this month I think that's really good. If they mean 50,000 by this time next year I would think they're hoping for more then that.

They mean 50,000 in the first 12 months. My own analysis is that this is an underestimate. I expect 100,000 in the first 12 months.

Analysts come to these conclusions mainly by talking to insiders who spill information to them, or they comb public but obscure sources. For example, it is possible to know almost exactly how many Sony's were sold in the first quarter after they launched, because the company who sold them the displays leaked out that sony bought 10,000 screens in the august before their launch. So that's the most they could have sold until the next order several months later.

My sources indicate Sony has sold between 20,000 and 50,000 of their readers since they launched. This is not enough for sony to continue the project long term. They had far higher volume than that in their online music venture and yet they shut that down this year.

Sony is likely benefitting from the enormous error made by Amazon in not having sufficient units on hand for christmas. That will keep them alive for one more year. But once Amazon gets their act together Sony has to be toast in this market. Amazon just has too muich marketing might.

A few months ago I would have said Sony is gone in 12 to 18 months, but the surge of sales they are no doubt seeing now will probably extend that to 18 to 24 months. They will wait to see if amazon builds a market for them. Amazon will indeed build a market, but not for Sony.

All bets are off if the USA falls into recession in 2008. In that case Sony could trim the project earlier as a cost cutting measure. There is approximately a 50% chance of recession in the USA in 2008.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by silvania

They mean 50,000 in the first 12 months. My own analysis is that this is an underestimate. I expect 100,000 in the first 12 months.

Possible but still a drop in a bucket. See how many iPhones, iTouches and Wii's for example have been sold when we talk about reading devices going mainstream

[Ervserver]

I think there will be screen shortages

[AintLDS]

Amazon's 4th quarter conference call is at the end of January. They should annouce how many Kindles they sold.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by silvania

Sony is likely benefitting from the enormous error made by Amazon in not having sufficient units on hand for christmas. That will keep them alive for one more year. But once Amazon gets their act together Sony has to be toast in this market. Amazon just has too muich marketing might.

Possibly they're picking up some but I don't think it will be a lot. If people realize that they can't buy Amazon books and read them on the Sony (let alone have them automatically delivered) I think they're more likely to wait. It's not just about having A reader. It's about THIS reader.